CMS WiRE, a web magazine focussed on content management, recently made the case for going paperless in an article titled Go Paperless, Save Money and the Planet. In the article they discuss how going “green”, through e-document manaement, has been gaining momentum, and how in a lot of ways this is the preferable option.
With an electronic document management system in place, staff all over, whether at headquarters or in sales offices, have the same instant and secure access to client files, as well as the ability to control access, audit user …

Adlib Software and Good Products have inked a new OEM partnership that will see the integration of Good Products electronic document managements system, g-docs, with Adlib Software’s Express Server centralized PDF rendering tool.
The collaboration between the two industry-leading scientific software providers addresses the need from the pharmaceutical industry for streamlined and compliant regulatory document management. Using the new integrated system, pharmaceutical organizations will be able to store, manage and track regulatory documents and create high quality regulatory submission-ready PDFs with bookmarks and hyperlinks.
Read the full press release here.

GreenPrint Technologies have written a White Paper on how GreenPrint can be used to reduce the number of pages that you print to paper from PDF. The idea behind GreenPrint is simple — it reviews your document before printing and highlights any pages to you that it thinks you may not want to print. You can easily discard unwanted pages or text and image elements with a couple of simple clicks.
The White Paper covers the real cost of printing, the myth of the paperless office and how GreenPrint can help.

Green Print …

Cnet news is reporting that NeatReceipts has decided that using the word receipts in their company name was a little too restrictive, and that from now, they’d prefer to be known as The Neat Company.
Along with the branding change, The Neat Company also released a new product called the NeatDesk (photo below).
 
NeatDesk
NeatDesk includes a 50-page document feeder and supports duplex scanning as well — best of all, it’s small, so it can rest easy on your desktop, and quietly tidy it.

One thing I’ve never liked about scanners is their size — they aren’t exactly portable in the laptop sense of the word. But that looks like it’s starting to change, with Xerox releasing the Xerox Travel Scanner 100.
 
Xerox Travel Scanner
It’s small, it’s powerful and it’s portable. More details from Xerox:
The Xerox Travel Scanner measures only 2″ x 1.5″ x 11.4″, weighs 10.6 ounces –less than a can of diet soda — and has a resolution of 600 dpi with 24-bit color. Because the Xerox Travel Scanner is powered through the USB port …

Check out this short demo of the Plastic Logic reader — it looks pretty slick. It’s going to be a very impressive device within a few years time.

I predict that within 5 years the majority of working professionals will be doing all of their reading on electronic devices — fiction books, newspapers, work memos, training manuals — you name it, it will be done on a device like the Kindle or the Plastic Logic reader. The reasons are clear: it’s easier, less wasteful and more efficient.

Do you think iTunes is the best thing since sliced bread for organizing your music? If so, you might be interested in an article on lifehacker that advocates the use of iTunes for organizing your PDFs too.
iTunes supports PDFs so you can add them to the library and then add them to playlists or filter them using smart playlists, just like you can music. It’s even possible to create multiple libraries with iTunes, so you don’t need to mix up your tax records with your Rage Against the Machine music …

I recently came across a very interesting article from the School of Information at the University of Texas. The article, Indexing Digital (Electronic) Documents — It’s Not an Option; Pay Now or Pay (More) Later, explores the differences between field-based and full-text-based indexing and explains why they recommend using both. They also cover:
Tangible and intangible organizational benefits of indexing digital documents are outlined. The various costs associated with indexing are detailed, and specific price information from service bureaus is presented. Recommendations for choosing an EDMS are included, as well as a model for assessing the …

Josh Catone over at Sitepoint takes a look at how digitizing paper is becoming a new cottage industry:
If you’re like me, you have a filing cabinet full of paper. Health insurance forms, utility bills, car service records, tax receipts, etc. It piles up fast and keeping track of it all is something of a pain in the butt. For virtual teams, with employees scattered around the globe, the pain caused by piles of paper can be more pronounced. Over the past year or two, a handful of startups have emerged …

Now about 10 months from its release in mid-to-late November in 2007 — enough time has passed to see what people really think of Amazon’s Kindle.
For those who haven’t owned one, used one, or otherwise seen one – you can find a floating copy of the original introduction video here on YouTube - The Amazon Kindle.
I’ve read through a slew of reviews ranging from the unimpressed, well-thought out response of “meh”, to the equal expression of literary genius, “it’s amazing” … and consequently compiled a (relatively) even-handed list below of more detailed …

How can you tell when you’ve really made the jump from “hold-in-your-hands-paper” to “batteries-not-included-digital” – for me it came in a few phases.
Phase 1 – from back in the early 80s, I never handwrote anything – well except when I absolutely had no choice. And of course, this explains why I’ve had many art nouveau-collectors approach me to buy my painfully scribbled shopping lists for tens of thousands of dollars.
Phase 2 - I recall when I was in university back in the early 90s, sitting through lectures (well, sometimes …

Adobe have announced plans to immediately discontinue the development of FlashPaper… Although some once touted FlashPaper as a PDF-killer, it never really fulfilled it’s promise in that regard. And, as you can imagine, any lingering PDF-killer thoughts, were quickly laid to rest when Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005.

Ever encounter the problem where you’re reading, writing, and publishing more than one document at the same time?  
Rhetorical question!
You know the scenario — you’ve got multiple windows open — all stacked on top of each other, you’re alt-tabbing applications to the point of arth-thumb-ritis. Even with 2 x 21″ screens and your Intel® Core™2 Extreme processor QX9770, you feel like you’re driving your Ferrari F430 Spider with the hand-break on.
Well, a quick and easy solution to this problem is to pick yourself up a copy of Desktop Rover™ v4.0. You will need multiple …

Rosebud PLM has moved to the next level with its WYSIWYG collaboration tool, Rosebud, based around Adobe PDF.
They announce that:

…”our unique method of collaboration on the Web — ‘Method and Software for enabling N-way collaboration work over the network for computers’ is officially designated as ‘patent pending’.”

and that….
Rosebud enables full lifecycle document review and supports both concurrent and independent collaboration in single platform independent software solution.

I have not had a chance to spend a great deal of time working with Rosebud myself — other than the original demo …

An interesting question — obviously given our background we ask ourselves this question all the time. Is it an email, a PDF, an HTML file, a blog or a page of blogs, what about a mySpace page — or even your facebook profile.
What exactly is a tweet? A valuable document — or as some say, a waste of time and overuse of “social networking”. Ie. Do I really care that you’ve gone to make yourself a cup of coffee, and that five minutes later you’ve finished and you’re going to …